Support the Community Turbine DEMO TOMORROW (Saturday 28th April) at TEN!

PEDAL and Greener Leith have hit a stum­bling block in nego­ti­ations over the deal to enable the Portobello & Leith Community Wind Turbine to be built on Scottish Water’s land.

We really need loc­al people to come along to show their sup­port for the pro­ject on this tomor­row, Saturday 28th April. Please please meet on the Prom at the slip road behind the Dog & Cat Home at 10AM and we will walk/cycle/scoot to the tur­bine site. Also can any­one make a ban­ner? If so con­tact justinkenrick@yahoo.co.uk.

Thanks for your com­ment Jonathan. It’s not neces­sar­ily the case that the tur­bine would be 125M high, it could be as low as 85M. If you hold the same views as Donald Trump, that’s your perog­at­ive. However the vast major­ity of folk in Scotland don’t seem to — see http://www.visitscotland.org/media_centre/windfarms_research.aspx for the latest inde­pend­ent research that shows the major­ity (80%) of Scotland respond­ents do not feel that wind farms spoil the look of the Scottish coun­tryside. Also, with this pro­posed tur­bine, all of the sur­pluses would go towards loc­al regen­er­a­tion pro­jects. So it would be quite dif­fer­ent from a purely private developer led pro­ject.

Fair com­ment Ann. We didn’t want to say too much as it’s a bit of a catch 22 — we’ve giv­en the story to Sunday Herald as an exclus­ive so they might be a touch annoyed if we said too much before the story goes out. Basically the US fan­aciers who fund the PFI deal at Seafield Sewage Works are say­ing they want cast iron indem­nit­ies in case the tur­bine dam­ages the sewage works. Fair enough. But they will only accept this from Scottish Water — which is 100% owned by Scottish Ministers — and Scottish Water are say­ing no. We’ve looked at the risks involved and the chances of an incid­ent are minute. So giv­en the poten­tial bene­fits form the tur­bine, we think it’s reas­on­able to ask Scottish Water to do this.